We have been busy the last two weeks getting all the goodies we bought and designed for the space working again. A big thanks to everyone involved with the cnc mills and laser cutters getting them working!

The Mini-mill

After a spindle and electronics upgrade and new housing to keep the dust in the Mini-mill is now working and ready for anything from cutting perspex to etching printed circuit boards.

Bessie

Our purchase from China: Bessie. After some trail and tribulations the team working on it got things moving:

Laser Cutter

The laser cutter now has a new tube and cooling system and works (as long as the temperature is less than 30 degrees)!

Quake on the oscilloscope

Lastly a small personal project on getting quake to run on the oscilloscope by turning video sounds, you can listen to what the game looks like in the video.

Circuit board to get the audio from the computer to the oscilloscope probes.

It’s only the first week in February and the space has been open every day this month.

We’ve had a ton of new members join with some really cool projects:

Delta Printer

We had our first delta printer show up and complete its first print. The way the printer begins a print is quite shocking. So shocking I didn’t get a video of it because I thought something went wrong and the pulleys snapped, but we did get a video of how it looks mid way through a print.

Saltwater Etching

“Etching” doesn’t really cover the idea of “completely dissolving” parts of a metal piece you don’t want, but it’s what everyone else who has done it calls it. Of course this being a hacker space things are done a bit differently here, instead of a 9 volt battery we used a 12 amp, 36 volt power supply, an Arduino controlled windscreen wiper motor keeps everything spinning around, a custom designed H bridge that can handle a few hundred watts and a 20 liter bath:

Smaller Projects

A robot that decided to rebel against its human masters.

A tiny car monitor connected to a Raspberry Pi.

A 3D sculpture of a tree.
Or failed support material if you’re less poetic. The 3D print still worked.

And lastly getting the oscilloscopes we have calibrated and working. Before long we’ll be able to play Quake on the newly donated ones.

Connected Community HackerSpace (Melbourne) Saturday, April 4 at 9:30 AM Visitors and newcomers are very welcome, please see http://hackmelbourne.org for more details. Short walk from Glenferrie train station. Car parking … Details: http://www.meetup.com/Connected-Community-HackerSpace-Melbourne/events/pmmhdlytgbgb/